Open source data science masters

September in Japan always begins the same way: Disaster Prevention Day. Across the country, schoolchildren don protective headgear and take cover under sturdy desks, the better to avoid falling debris; public-safety workers conduct mock searches and rescues for victims stuck under rubble; and medical ­personnel attend to the faux injured. The annual ritual underscores a simple fact of life for the Japanese: earthquakes happen. Tokyo, the gleaming megalopolis of 35 million, lies in a particularly vulnerable area. Three tectonic plates converge 300 kilometers east of the city, while a chain of active volcanoes stretches 100 km to the west. Tokyoites experience the odd tremor every other week on average, and the city has been rocked by five major quakes in the past three centuries. The country’s annual disaster exercise occurs on the anniversary of the deadliest of these episodes, the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923. In that catastrophe, 140 000 people perished, and much of … [Read more...] about How to Master a Seismic Disaster

HPC High performance computing (HPC) has already contributed enormously to scientific innovation, industrial and economic competitiveness, national and regional security, and the quality of human life. This crucial role has been emphasized in recent years by U.S. and Russian presidents, as well as by senior officials in Europe and Asia.Steve Conway, IDC VP HPC explains that, to date, most data-intensive HPC jobs in the government, academic and industrial sectors have involved the modeling and simulation of complex physical and quasi-physical systems. These systems range from product designs for cars, planes, golf clubs and pharmaceuticals, to subatomic particles, global weather and climate patterns, and the cosmos itself. However, he notes that from the start of the supercomputer era in the 1960s — and even earlier — an important subset of HPC jobs has involved analytics, attempts to uncover useful information and patterns in the data itself. For example, cryptography, one … [Read more...] about Big Data Meets HPC

Security The Science DMZ traces its name to an element of network security architecture. In a security context, a DMZ or “demilitarized zone” is a portion of a site network which is specifically dedicated to external-facing services (such as Web and e-mail servers). Typically, located at the network perimeter, a DMZ has its own security policy because of its dedicated purpose — exchanging data with the outside world. A Science DMZ is specifically dedicated to external-facing high-performance science services. For example, the data servers for a large data repository would be put in a Science DMZ so that collaborating institutions could easily transfer hundreds of terabytes of data for analysis.Eli Dart, a network engineer with the Department of Energy’s Energy Sciences Network (ESnet), first coined the term “Science DMZ” in early 2010 to describe the network configuration linking two DOE sites — the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory in New … [Read more...] about Science DMZ Infrastructure Architecture Accelerates Data Flows

Data Analysis Winners of 2010 AAAS Kavli Science Journalism AwardsProbing environmental reports on the size of the Gulf oil spill, the possible risks of chemicals commonly found in drinking water, and the fate of an endangered fish in the Colorado River are among the winners of the 2010 AAAS Kavli Science Journalism Awards. The awards, administered by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) since their inception in 1945, go to professional journalists for distinguished reporting for a general audience. The Kavli Foundation, based in Oxnard, California, provided a generous endowment in 2009 that ensures the future of the awards program. Independent panels of science journalists pick the winners, who will receive $3000 and a plaque at the 2011 AAAS Annual Meeting in Washington, D.C., in February. "It's an enormous honor to receive this award from the AAAS," said Charles Duhigg, who won the large-newspaper award for his "Toxic Waters" series in The New York Times. … [Read more...] about Winners of 2010 AAAS Kavli Science Journalism Awards

Data Analysis Bringing an Ancient Maya City to Scholars' DesktopsA new archaeological data archive and Web-based collaborative learning tool is providing researchers, educators, filmmakers and digital heritage enthusiasts with the most complete data to date of any ancient Maya site. The archive centerpiece is a priceless 3-D record of the ancient Maya city of Chichen Itza, recently voted one of the "New Seven Wonders of the World" by an eponymous Swiss-based foundation.1 Computer visualization researchers at the Institute for the Study and Integration of Graphical Heritage Techniques2 (INSIGHT) generated the open source archaeological data archive on-site in the Yucatan, through the use of 3-D laser scanning equipment and digital photographs.3 The INSIGHT team then synthesized raw data into 3-D computer models of the site today; the team also visualized the site as it may have looked in the past,4 paying meticulous attention to texture and light. Their data and tools are now available … [Read more...] about Bringing an Ancient Maya City to Scholars’ Desktops

Data Analysis Not Quite an MIT Degree, but MITx may Still AppealThink you can hack it at MIT? If so, the world-renowned university is willing to give you a new kind of credential to prove it.Not a full-fledged diploma — that's still a possibility only for the 10,000 or so students admitted to its Cambridge, MA, campus. But MIT has announced that, for the first time, it will offer credentials — under the name "MITx" — to students who complete the online version of certain courses, starting with a pilot program this spring."This is not MIT light. This is not an easier version of MIT," said Provost L. Rafael Reif. "An MITx learner, anywhere they are, for them to earn a credential they have to demonstrate mastery of the subject just like an MIT student does."The announcement comes as elite universities like Stanford, Yale and Carnegie-Mellon are experimenting with how to use the Internet to extend their teaching to a global audience hungering for instruction on platforms … [Read more...] about Not Quite an MIT Degree, but MITx may Still Appeal

A fascinating global ocean studies initiative helps best define some of the IT superlatives around big data, cloud computing and middleware integration capabilities.The Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI) and its accompanying Cyberinfrastructure Program aims to provide an unprecedented ability to study the Earth's oceans and climate using myriad distributed data centers and literally oceans' worth of data.The scale and impact of the science's importance is closely followed by the magnitude of the computer science needed to make that data accessible and actionable by scientists. In a sense, the OOI and its infrastructure program, a major undertaking by the National Science Foundation, are constructing a big data-scale programmable and integratable cloud fabric for oceanography.We've gathered three leaders to explain the OOI and how the Cyberinfrastructure Program may not only solve this set of data and compute problems, but perhaps establish a path to how future massive data and … [Read more...] about PODCAST Big Data and the Deep Blue Sea

Well, we're in the final countdown now as 2012 draws to a close, so you'd think all would be quiet here in the Linux blogosphere as bloggers hunker down to recover from what's been an exceptionally exhausting year.Linux Girl, for one, has been putting in extra hours on her favorite barstool down at the blogosphere's Broken Windows Lounge in an effort to recover a bit of the sanity that slipped away in 2012.Sadly, no such luck!Right in the middle of yet another double Peppermint Penguin, Linux Girl's Tux Phone began screaming. There was fresh news to be covered, and with a hefty twist of mystery, to boot!"Save the date: Jan 2 -- Ubuntu set to disrupt a new ecosystem," read the urgent message. "Ubuntu will announce a brand-new product."Luckily for her readers, Linux Girl is always on duty. She donned her mask and a fresh cape and set off for Canonical HQ.All lips were maddeningly sealed at the Ubuntuplex, of course, but the same couldn't be said of the blogger crowds camped outside in … [Read more...] about LINUX BLOG SAFARI Rumors Running Wild About Ubuntu’s Top-Secret New Product

Corporate demand for computer security experts is growing -- and so are the options available to higher-education students and IT professionals who want to increase their expertise without overstepping legal or ethical boundaries.At present, financial institutions worldwide allot 6 percent of their total IT budgets to security, according to a report released earlier this year by Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu. Also, despite the poor economy, 47 percent of respondents have increased their security staffing levels.The good news does not end with financial companies. By the end of this year, Meta Group predicted in a separate study in 2002, 55 percent of companies in multiple vertical markets will dedicate 5 percent of their total IT spending to security.Colleges and universities are well aware that many computer science graduates are eyeing this comparatively stable and lucrative segment of the IT sector.Northeastern University, for example, offers a Ph.D. in Computer Science with a … [Read more...] about Becoming a Security Guru Without Breaking the Law

Except for those folks living under rocks (sounds uncomfortable), everyone knows about or at least has heard of bitcoin. However, not everyone understands the technology of bitcoin, which extends well beyond Internet-based currency.For the rock people, bitcoin is an Internet-based currency that allows for transparency with respect to each transfer of the currency through the use of a distributed database. Each transaction is locked in a block, and blocks are connected to form a "blockchain." Blockchain is an open source technology that facilitates creating each block, locking each block, and connecting the resulting string of blocks. Because it is a write-only database that never can be edited or deleted, the blockchain gives integrity to the complete history of the transaction.For example, if we purchase a new tablet online using bitcoin, the seller wants certainty that the purchaser actually owns the bitcoins used to purchase the tablet. Also, the seller wants to be certain that the … [Read more...] about TECHNOLOGY LAW CORNER Intertwining Artificial Intelligence With Blockchain